


Perihelion

by ladygrange



Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: ......anywho......, Beards (Facial Hair), But also, F/M, Morning Sex, Oral Sex, also me, and also why is the image of that bearded face, and did jimmy’s master tapes suffer from sticky shed syndrome, and perchance a kiss to the roundest of noses!!!!!!, and!!, ask me anything that can put your body to sleep, at the mixing desk, cheek in hand, do not forget that i desire you, how exactly does a vacuum tube work, it will not be the crux of believability, i’ve quoted it before and i’ll quote it again:, me to myself: you do not need to know how quadraphonic sound works, show me your tape delay you hairy son of a bitch!!, so dang attractive, ten tabs deep in magnetic tape recording:, the tender gesture says, we return to the root of all relations, where need and desire join, without trying to seize anything at once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 20:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20895713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygrange/pseuds/ladygrange
Summary: a lazy morning on the last day in bombay. featuring kisses to faces.





	Perihelion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paintbox (imstillprettyodd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imstillprettyodd/gifts).

Mosquito net flutters inches before her face. This close, she can make out the hexagonal weave of the fabric. It must be early judging by the pale light sprouting from the windows and the sound of a voice below their windows. This will be the last day in Bombay, she thinks, with a pang. Last time to listen to whoever sang on the roadside, unaccompanied, dissonance stretched to breaking. Every morning since they’d arrived. 

She stretches her calves out until the muscles tremble then relax. Still, handfuls of hours remain to enjoy this strange, bustling city. Full of rhythms. 

Lips curving, she lingers on the field recorder sat on a chair against the opposite wall. Stellavox had been kind enough to make it expressly for Jimmy. Shipped directly from Switzerland and into his waiting hands. ‘Quadraphonic, darling,’ Jimmy had said to her upon its arrival. Obvious relish in the grin spread across his cheeks. He didn’t need to tell her how easy reel-to-reel recording would be to capture here, but that had not stopped him anyway. A few reels of tape, replete with sounds and demos, sit in their silver canisters next to the Stellavox. Only yesterday had she predicted Jimmy’s plans: ‘You’ll be holed up for hours with the tapes’. And he would be soon enough, though - she nibbles her bottom lip - nobody in their party had the spoons to consider the musical agility needed to translate Western notation to the East. Jimmy - adamant, enthused, buzzed with energy at the studio in the city center - could have spent weeks there just trading chords and ideas. And haggling with a chap from Slip Disc club over a surprise Fender that the man would not part with.

It was a surprise in the first place to find a small venue, packed with loud psychedelia and the beginnings of harder rock. Jimmy playing a guitar that appeared to have piano strings. Face split with a smile. Much more at home than mounting that camel with the wind sweeping his hair across his face. She’s still amazed he rode the animal. 

The song is about to end. Melody set to resolve in a few moments. She adjusts her cheek on the pillow and her gaze falls to the clothing on the floor. Dirty blue jeans and blouses and then his fair isle sweater vest with striations of yellow and blue and orange, scallops of green that catch his irises, hung on the back of a chair. Drying, and hopefully not souring in this humidity, she thinks. A half-formed desire curls in her belly at the memory of stripping that off him. She could easily turn to him, warm and yielding just a roll way. But she wants to follow the memory. A bit drunk, voices sloshing into kisses and under shirts, mouths without lucid purpose. His breath hot against her.

The song ends, leaving the jumble of traffic and pedestrians outside. Wakefulness mingles with her yawn. But she doesn’t want to go back to sleep, nor does she want venture out just yet. 

They should have a bath - for there is no one else with whom she can sit in water. Soaked together with want. She turns over to tell Jimmy and finds him fast asleep. Looking as though nothing on earth could wake him. An arm flung above his head, a face covered in so much dark hair she can't ignore the urge to clear a piece of it from his cheek. Jimmy doesn't even twitch. Mouth open and striking in the inky midst of his beard. Breath easy and full. The sight strings peace along her nerves. Gives way to her hand molded at his jaw. The hair there is thick and scratchy-soft, a mix of cut velvet and wool. She scoots closer.

She knows it must be the best kind of sleep when he doesn't stir at her touch trailing his face, fingers sunk into his beard and then gliding over the warm skin of his neck. Savoring the change of textures all the way to his chest. Hairy again. Mouth feathered to the place at his neck busy with a pulse. Then beside the flat circle of his nipple. She drapes kisses over apex of his ribs, hugging her face close to the rise and fall there; their smell mixed with a faint starch from the bedding. Carefully, she sneaks her tongue out, testing his skin, tasting his health. How good it was to eat here.

Vada pav devoured on a curbside, mouths burning from the green chili pepper. Frozen, creamy kulfi with a hint of rose cooled the heat. She had marveled at the dessert, even in the intense swelter it’d melted slowly. Tea vendors circulated everywhere. Jimmy had tried brew after brew, never tiring. By the end of the day, he’d tasted of strong chai. Sharp ginger and cardamom in his kiss. Tongue a bit sweet from milk. 

Somewhere along in thought, she's gotten tangled in his legs. A considerable thing to reckon with, now wedged and slung with her own. She nuzzles her smile in his ribs and shimmies a bit further down. Hair drug upward, her view is sun-washed and lustrous near his belly button. It would be a shame, she thinks, to neglect the place where his belly meets his hips. A border of nerves that makes his muscles clutch for a moment. A sleepy noise leaves Jimmy. She hovers very still, while anticipation swoops in her tummy. Her heart calms eventually, and she rests against his stomach. A strange and special pleasure, she ponders, to be awake and drawing her fingers in idle patterns along his thigh. She gets a look down to his toes. They curl inward briefly at her light graze to his cock, half-hard and very warm, straying towards his left hip bone. Nested in tufts of springy black hair that tickle her grazing chin. An even greater shame, she decides, to waste that particular place, this unhurried opportunity. 

With the lightest of kisses, she drags her lips along the raised vein running his length. Measures him in a slow, silky caress. Jimmy grows harder by degrees. Lost in her study, her own breath grown faster and louder, she doesn’t notice his own change. Palm splayed on his belly, she feels Jimmy suck in a primitive sounding groan and lifts her head. Spit hangs in delicate threads from her mouth to his erection. Jimmy watches her with shuttered eyes and a mouth still open, bottom lip trembling a bit. Her pulse kicks in her throat and sends sweet heat down to her toes, as though her heart were some bright warm thing bursting along every line. 

Jimmy widens one leg and lays the other over her back. Her breath shudders at the hands reaching for her head. Jimmy holds her as though tipping a bowl to his lips and arches into every change in pressure, every way she draws him into the wet depths of her mouth. It gives her a rush, intense and private, to lap the salty pearls leaking from his tip. Even more for his sounds - still sleep rough - steeped in pleasure. Her name broken alongside a moan when she sucks at the meeting between head and shaft. Desire one ache shared between them. She has to press her thighs together. 

Then she licks long and sloppy, with her palm curled to keep him in place, nose grazing slippery hot skin. His heel digs into her back and his hips grow taught - and then, suddenly - Jimmy pulls her free. Aroused and anxious to keep tasting him, she plops her way up his torso, to the little peaks of his nipples. And she nibbles and nips and luxuriates in Jimmy’s hands running along her head, sloping over her shoulders in encouragement. Noises of want color the air and stick in his chest when she bites down on the left one. His cock, pressed wet and hard to her stomach, twitches. She rocks against him, knowing how good it would feel to be taken like this, with only a slight hitch of her hips. Astride his body, lazy and full and delicious. Jimmy has other plans.

He rolls them over with ease. Light slants across his face - shattering green and ruddy cheeks and his beard very dark, lips very red. She splays her knees out, her legs drawn apart, and tilts her hips in a wordless invitation. The laugh lines at the outer corners of his eyes deepen. Jimmy nudges his nose against hers. Meets her answering smile with kisses. Succulent ones made long and tongue-tangled. He feeds them to her, the one hitched onto the next. A mutual devouring in the way they fold and form into each other, with no end. No end to the agile hands cradling her face and then the swell of her breast, pulling at her nipple until she’s whining into the kiss. Jimmy takes the peak into his mouth in wet draws. Beard a rasp on the underside. A touch to the inside of her thigh. 

Caught between the lovely urge to pull him back for kissing or mouth much lower, she settles into the covers. Jimmy doesn’t release her nipple until she’s simmering, hips catching up without her knowledge each time he nuzzles each breast, licking away the mist of sweat in hot, abrasive stripes. Replacing it with his saliva, until the tips glisten red, stiff, achy. She tightens her grip in his hair and hitches her hips and finds him nearly there, hovering over the thatch of hair between her legs. His breath meets humid, swollen flesh.

Jimmy pulls her apart with his thumbs and smears arousal along the way. Above her, she can see where the netting meets the ceiling. A delicate knot, the same suspended twine keeps her from melting into slow, boundless orgasm. Her brows furrow when Jimmy pulls her snug to his face, where open, vulnerable skin meets the fur of his beard and the plush suck of his lips. She’s wet enough that the first three fingers go in smooth then curve forward but she clasps tight around the fourth. Her cheek lolls to the side. Jimmy fits a fourth. 

Her body slurs molten. Hot like the suction of his mouth on her clit. Fingers knuckle deep, slick and heavy inside her, hot too. She bites the mound of the pillow when Jimmy reaches out for her nipple. Belly quivering, she grabs his wrist and sobs into the mouthful of cotton. But Jimmy knows.

He knows to stop when she tightens at regular intervals. Her clit an exposed throb, hard from his attention. Pleasure so thick in her blood. He places her legs apart, knees splayed flat like they were before, drawn up to cradle his body. Jimmy frees the pillow of her wet bite and curls his arms above her head. Joy like honey slides through her at the sight of him. Flushed cheeks, eyes awash in need. Mouth bright from her cunt. His cock slips against her sodden curls, her slippery clit, then a brief, glorious catch of connection. Playing with her.

She palms his back, rocking in a pulse to savor that catch and then his subtle roll backward to deny her. Creases radiate from the outside corners of his eyes when she whimpers impatiently. Jimmy nudges his nose to her nose and shakes his head. Swallows her mewls in a kiss. A long one this time because she’s lost and wants him. Penetrated until she comes. Thankfully, Jimmy wants that too. 

She adjusts with clutching grasp on Jimmy’s back, sunk into skin made damp from the morning sun, her gaze unfocused, entire body bent on her ache. The gradual way he sinks inside. Until he’s crushed against her. Jimmy makes a gruff, pained sound but keeps still, his hair spills dark and almost shimmering between them. His arms tighten their circle above her, the inner parts available next to her mouth. Jimmy blinks slowly at her. Soft anchorage in his gaze.

“Good morning,” he says, a hint raspy. A smile draws his cheeks into rounds. 

Her body answers before she can, clamping wetly. Insides struck, whenever they wake, in whatever way, with wonder and knowing.

“Good morning,” she replies, voice wavering. 

She pulls Jimmy close to press her mouth into the dense hair at his cheeks. Smothering formless sounds there and making the skin of her face tingle pleasantly. She curls her arms around his head to hold him close and trails over to the sheltered hollow below his ear; a satiny divide between beard and hair. One she licks at, that makes Jimmy shift his hips in a quick thrust to her cervix. Has her greedy for the next. Empty then stretched, accepting. Made whole. She feels it in the back of her throat. Watches Jimmy’s eyelids droop heavy, his tongue peeking out. He’s buried inside her again and she could almost cry. The root of his erection presses hard to her clit and makes her clutch and flutter. 

She turns her face to his arm, to drag her nose and mouth along his milky skin. How had she never appreciated this particular spot; the salty taste of him and the underground blues of his veins. The quick, responsive way Jimmy groans. Her own cry is muffled in his arm when Jimmy catches a sweet spot. 

She wants to tell him something, something about how close she is, how rooted between the bed and his body. The former holding her saturated weight with his every thrust, the latter working in languid, sweat-slicked way. So full. But she can’t maneuver the bridge between these fleecy thoughts and her mouth. Now occupied against his, then gone slack at orgasm. Throat working helplessly against that scalding rush. Jimmy makes a rumbly sort of noise at the way she rolls her hips into his thrusts and contracts around him. Panting and tight.

Still trembling, she wraps him up in her thighs. Till his face cracks open. She pulls his hair out of the way to whisper his name, a soft thing in her mouth. How very much she wants him, wants to feel him come. Then she's dripping with seed. Palms spread over the soft curve of his ass, she kneads while he rocks in the afterglow. Head tucked into the turn of her neck. 

She walks her fingers up his spine and delves into his nape. They’re nearly stitched with ticklish sides exposed, bellies pressed together, his face nestled and beard rasping her skin. Jimmy shivers at her nails against his scalp and releases a pleased groan. She delivers kisses against the messy part in his hair, until she feels him smile, then brushes his hair to the side, only to be met with crinkles drawn across his temple. She kisses those too. Jimmy turns his face for more and she grazes her mouth against the rounded end of his nose. Leaves off with a kiss to the peach gleam on his cheek.

“Good morning,” Jimmy says between licks below her jaw.

She smiles and tucks his hair behind his ear, the lobe soft on her thumb. “We already did that part.”

He sighs at her neck. “Bears repeating.”

She hums. “Did you sleep well?”

Jimmy’s eyes slide shut briefly, a sound of thorough enjoyment in his throat. As if to say: yes, better than I could ever tell. 

“I’m glad you did,” she says softly then turns to her side so that they’re level and lined together.

Jimmy makes that sound again when she rests her arm over his shoulder. He nuzzles a bristled kiss to her nose. Her toes flex then curl. 

A warm palm soothes her cheek, fingers sliding into her hair. 

“And you?” Jimmy asks. 

She gives a gentle nod. They drift quiet. Afloat between open gazes. A fertile silence. His face lush before her and full of possibility, smiling a slow red bow unraveled. Hair already prone to disarray, coiled with her fingers, pressed to her palm. She feels herself very near weightlessness, buoyant over depths. It is here, swathed in the quiet, in the covers, hand cupped around her head, when Jimmy says,

“Have a bath with me?”

**Author's Note:**

> To paintbox: who reads my work and responds with such invorating observation. I adore your one shots, they do what I love, combining Zeppelin’s history in emotionally centered narratives. Reminds me of the types of stories I started out reading and which still influence me. Doncha know I replay that scene of Monica and Jimmy on the plane in Japan? Talking about her orchids. Thank you for reading and writing and sticking with me <3
> 
> Perihelion - when a planet or other celestial body is closest to the sun - occurred for the Earth on January 4, 1971 and January 3, 1972. With a couple of exceptions, I derive my titles from Zeppelin bootlegs. But I like the possible ways of reading perihelion’s connotations, and the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard song inspired me to delve into this in the first place :D 
> 
> From what I can determine, JP went to Bombay three times during Zeppelin’s career. The first: in October 3, 1971, after Japan, was brief. The second: February 13, 1972 before the Australian dates. They’d been denied entry into Singapore. And while quite short, this visit has some video footage JP took from a cab. Includes a snake charmer and a lot of hazy city whizzing by. I think the famous camel pics come from this trip. There’s also speculation that they went in March of 1972 but I couldn’t dig up specifics. The third: October of 1972 which features JP and RP at The Slip Disc in a jam session. During this longer visit, JP and RP recorded “Friends” and “Four Sticks” with a collection of local musicians. Of course, these are available on the extended remasters. The uncut version is online.
> 
> All that background, some of which is hard to pin down and most of which has grainy photographic evidence, to say that I’ve mashed up all three visits in this one shot. Mostly because I wanted beard, which is my bread and butter, narratively speaking. So, the sequence of events is purposefully jumbled here and factually some things don’t line up, but hopefully it still reads well.
> 
> And finally, the line about sitting in water comes from Ilya Kaminsky’s poem, “When the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses.” Upon reflection I think Perihelion combines elements present in a lot of my one shots: bathing together, resting together, and eating together. Doing each one with intention and presence. A sort of emotional and physical holding. Something restorative. Here’s a fragment of Kaminsky’s poem: 
> 
> Soaping together  
is sacred to us.  
Washing each other’s shoulders.  
You can fuck  
anyone–but with whom can you sit  
in water?
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
